I had no idea what to expect of a Descended funeral, and I had been too wrapped up in thoughts of the Challenging to bother finding out.
To make matters worse, there was no one around to ask. House Corbois had departed hours earlier to rub elbows with the other Houses before the event began. Remis had insisted that I fly in later on Sorae—alone.
“If only you could talk, Sorae,” I groaned, flipping through a stack of dresses I’d pulled from the wardrobe. “I bet you would be a fantastic advisor.”
She gave a breathy snort and snapped her teeth, as if to say You’re damn right I would.
Eleanor had stocked my closets with clothing in every style and color, but she had thought too highly of my intellect—wrongly, it seemed—to label them by appropriate occasion. I pulled out a modest, unadorned black gown that revealed little other than a low back and held it up to Sorae. “What do you think—royal funeral appropriate?”
The dark slits of her reptilian eyes swelled and thinned. She gave me a guttural rumble, a tendril of smoke wafting from her nostrils.
“Too plain?” I wrinkled my nose and stared at my options. “If you were pretending to be a naive, airheaded fool, what would you wear?”
A scrap of glittering scarlet caught my eye. “Probably something like this,” I joked, tugging out a slinky dress with thin crisscrossing straps down the back and thighs. Sorae let out a soprano trill that I swore sounded like an agreement.
I held the gaudy dress against my body. Flecks of light sparkled as I swayed from side to side. “If I wore this to a funeral in the mortal world, my funeral would come next.”
Sorae’s fur-tipped tail smacked the floor. She lifted her head from the pillows and nudged my ankle insistently.
“It’s too much. There will be time soon enough to make a big statement. Today, I need to blend in and not be noticed.”
Her golden eyes shot to the dazzling Crown above my head, as if saying Good luck with that.
I sighed and peeled off my clothing, then shimmied into the plain black dress. The open back was more dramatic than I’d expected, dipping so low it was nearly obscene. I fought the instinct to cover it up.
Though I was slowly becoming more comfortable in the luxurious gowns common among women of the palace, the sensuality with which the Descended put their skin on display was still deeply intimidating. I wasn’t ashamed of my body, but nor was I proud. It was simply utilitarian, a tool to meet my needs, whether that be working, fighting, or sex. I had never imagined my flesh as something to be admired.
Even with Henri, I’d always struggled to see myself as an object of desire. We spent our childhoods swimming naked and stripping to our undergarments to avoid the summer heat. Revealing my body to him had never felt like an intimate act, even after our activities had gone well beyond platonic.
I left my hair unbound, the snowy tresses curtaining the expanse of skin at my back. Unlike in the mortal world, my strange hair fit right in among the Descended, who delighted in dying their hair shocking hues. Eleanor had warned me that court regulars would soon be sporting newly whitened hair in a cheap attempt to flatter me.
“What do you think?” I called out to Sorae, spreading my skirt and spinning in a circle. “Do I look forgettable and inoffensive?”
She let out a soft huff, then rose to her feet, disappearing through the archway to her perch.
“I’ll take that as a yes,” I muttered. I hiked up my skirts and strapped two blades to my thighs, then followed her to the stone balcony. The day was sunny and brisk, but not windy, the perfect day for a ride in the skies.
I ran my hand along her haunches and marveled at the powerful muscles that twitched beneath her sandy brown fur. I studied the spot along her feline body just behind her wings, then gave her a wary stare. “Am I supposed to put a saddle on you, or…”
She stretched her neck to the sky and erupted in a sudden roar. Her tail whipped angrily toward me, nearly smacking my shin.
“Alright, alright!” I yelped, throwing my hands up in surrender and dodging another flick of her tail. “No saddle. Understood.”
She dropped low to the ground and curved her wing around me in silent encouragement to climb on. Like a fool, I glanced over the balcony’s edge instead. My stomach clenched at the steep drop.
“You’re not allowed to let me fall, right? You’re oath bound to make sure I don’t die?”
I felt a tug and looked down to see the train of my dress bunched up in Sorae’s toothy jaws. She reared back, yanking me away from the edge. I let out a laugh as she dropped the fabric, gave my hip a swift bump with her snout, and huffed impatiently.
“I trust you,” I conceded with a grin. I gathered my skirts and threw my leg across her back. She patiently waited while I found a handhold along her shoulder blades, then gave a sweet, inquisitive trill.
I took a deep breath and closed my eyes.
“Alright, girl. Show me what you’ve got.”
With a jubilant howl, Sorae launched from her powerful hind legs. A few downbeats of her mighty wings, and we were soaring into the sky.
Euphoric laughter bubbled up from my chest. A burst of Sorae’s pride shot across the bond at the sound of my delight. Though my stomach still felt wobbly and a bit weightless every time I peeked at the ground below, any unease was drowned out by my swelling joy.
There was something liberating about cutting through the clouds on Sorae’s back. I was no longer leashed by the stress of the Challenging, court politics, or the expectations of a divided realm on the brink of war. Up here, I was blissfully unburdened. My problems weren’t gone, but they were anchored to the ground, and I was in the skies.
I couldn’t remember the last time I’d felt this happy, this free. Maybe I never had.
“This is incredible!” I shouted, gently squeezing the tendons that connected Sorae’s wing to her back. “What do you say we fly away and never return?”
She let loose a long, booming yowl and tilted her wings at an angle, sending us shooting toward the earth before banking into a sharp turn that had my heart in my throat. A string of happy warbles rumbled out of her as she continued to climb and plummet, circle and roll.
Although the sheer terror of it was shaving years off my life, I now had a lot more of those to burn, and I couldn’t bear to make her stop. Her childlike giddiness was the sweetest music. She was playing, showing me her world for one precious moment where her gilded chains felt as temporarily invisible as my own.
The forests of Lumnos passed in a blur beneath us, and far too quickly, our exultant moment ended as a massive, oval-shaped structure came into view. On one end, the royal family’s seating area was outfitted with upholstered chairs and cushioned banquettes, in contrast to the rows of stone benches that ran along the perimeter.
Luther had come by this morning with another tray of breakfast and an overview of the agenda, a move I had to admit was endearing him to me—the daily food deliveries, not the advising. I knew from his guidance that Sorae would take me to the center, where I would lay a ceremonial final log on the King’s pyre to start the service. I was so busy reciting his instructions in my head that we had nearly landed before I noticed the audience was filled with a vibrant shade of cherry red.